A Unified Framework for Uniform-Price Resource Allocation Mechanisms
For mechanism designers, this provides a simple, practical family of mechanisms that improve upon the widely-used Kelly mechanism without sacrificing simplicity.
The paper introduces a unified framework for designing simple resource allocation mechanisms that interpolate between the Kelly mechanism and the first-price auction, achieving strict improvements in efficiency (up to full efficiency in equilibrium) and revenue guarantees relative to VCG.
Mechanisms for allocating a divisible resource among strategic agents have been widely studied. The prominent paradigm is the proportional (Kelly) mechanism, which elicits a scalar bid per agent, allocates the resource proportionally, and charges payments equal to the bids. Follow-up mechanisms improve social welfare, but sacrifice simplicity by introducing complex allocation rules or unintuitive payments. We introduce a unified framework for designing simple resource allocation mechanisms with proportional-style allocations and uniform pricing. Our framework yields a family of mechanisms that interpolate between the Kelly mechanism and the first-price auction. These mechanisms strictly improve upon Kelly's efficiency guarantees, even achieving full efficiency in equilibrium, while also providing revenue guarantees relative to the VCG mechanism.